Wireless priority service is a service for giving priority to critical wireless station originated calls and critical calls terminated on wireless stations (originated by either wireless or wireline stations). On origination, the priority service is invoked by a wireless caller dialing a wireless priority service feature code (e.g., *272). The authority of the wireless caller to place such a call is checked and if that caller has the authority the wireless priority service (WPS) feature indication is passed along with the call. In accordance with the prior art, routing for the call is accomplished by first routing the call to the home switch of the terminating party (referred to as the in-call switch). That home switch queries the home location register (HLR) to find a last-seen pointer to identify the mobile switching center in which the called party had most recently registered. If this last-seen pointer is the same as the in-call switch then the call is routed directly to the destination mobile station and, if the call has a priority indicator, then, if there are no radio resources available, the call is placed in a preferred queue so that the call is given preference over other calls competing for the same radio resources. Other calls can be completed but will have a lower priority access to the radio resources. If the last-seen pointer points to a different switch then a request is sent to the last-seen switch, the request including the mobile station identifier, and the last-seen switch returns a Temporary Local Directory Number (TLDN) to the in-call switch. The call is then routed from the in-call switch using the TLDN, to the last-seen switch, referred to as the anchor switch.
If the anchor switch pages the mobile station and fails to receive a response, the anchor switch sends a request to a group of neighboring switches called border switches to page the mobile station.
Applicants have found a number of problems with the present arrangement with respect to the completion of high priority calls to wireless stations.